The invention concerns pocket torches or similar articles and more particularly the switch of these torches.
A battery pocket torch necessarily includes a battery and an electric bulb, but also generally a support for the bulb, most often with a glass, reflector or lens, a casing generally in several parts containing everything, an electric circuit running from the two poles of the battery to the two terminals of the torch, and a switch interposed in this circuit. Among the large number of known pocket torches, the majority are for this reason relatively complex, and the simplest among them do not always give satisfaction, in particular as regards the switch and the quality of the contacts. This generally reveals itself by illumination of weak and variable brilliance, even with batteries in good condition.
The object of the invention is to produce a switch with clean contact, particularly for a pocket torch, which will nevertheless be of extremely great simplicity and of low cost.
The invention consists in using a bulb or a lamp assembly, the terminals of which are constituted by a central block and a lateral sleeve, and which comprises at the other extremity, through which the light is emitted, an enlarged portion followed by a reduced portion providing a shoulder on the enlarged portion, and in mounting this bulb between an abutment surface having an oblong notch for the passage of the reduced portion, and a planar surface substantially parallel to it, urged resiliently in the direction of the abutment surface, while permitting to the bulb a sufficient lateral play in a single direction corresponding to that of the notch, this play being such that the bulb automatically assumes a position inclined in one direction or the other, which corresponds to only two stable positions of equilibrium, being positions in which the central block remains in contact with the planar surface which serves to supply one of the electric polarities, while the lateral sleeve is in contact in one position with an insulating lateral wall and in the other position with a conducting lateral wall connected to the other polarity, in such a way that the lighting and extinguishing of the torch are obtained by simple tilting of the bulb by acting on the reduced portion passing through the notch.
The planar abutment surface may in particular be constituted directly by the negative bottom of an elongated battery, which latter is urged axially, in its seating by a spring engaging against its positive end in such a way that the switch, operating in the manner of a tumbler, employs the bulb as its sole constituent component, the usual battery and contact spring and the housing itself being able to be extremely simplified and the electric circuit reduced to a conducting element constituting the lateral conducting wall and connected to the spring, this conducting element being able to constitute a part of the housing itself or of the spring.